1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to the fields of radio and television. More particularly, the invention pertains to methods and apparatus concerning the selection of television channels and radio channels.
2. Description of Related Art
There are various devices known in the art for setting television channels. U.S. Pat. No. 3,961,267, entitled “Channel Selecting Control System for Television Tuner Including Unused Channel Skip System” and issued Jun. 1, 1976 to Weissmueller, provides a programmable tuning scanner which steps through preselected channels to allow an operator to stop at a desired channel. U.S. Pat. No. 4,876,736, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Determining Channel Reception of a Receiver” and issued Oct. 24, 1989 to Kiewit, provides the initial tuning of a default channel when a television is turned on following the television being turned off. It is unclear how this initial default channel is set or what it is set to, although it appears that the television merely goes back to the channel it was set to when it was turned off.
U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2001/0013124, entitled “Systems and Methods for Replacing Television Signals” by Klosterman et al. and published Aug. 9, 2001, discloses methods and systems to substitute alternative video, audio signals, graphics, or text to be displayed on the viewer's television display monitor for the video or audio signals that would otherwise be displayed according to the channel to which the viewer has tuned the television set. Methods and systems replace or modify the advertisements that can be seen and heard by the television viewer.
A device marketed under the trade name “Cardio Theater” (Amer Sports Corp., Helsinki, Finland) is used at exercise facilities or gymnasiums. This device flicks to a predetermined channel, so that the channel number shows, and then a TV monitor is shut off. There is no dwell time and no image shown of the channel to which the television monitor is switched to.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,565,122, entitled “System and Method for Providing Automatic Tuning of a Radio Receiver and for Providing Automatic Control of a CD/Tape Player” and issued Jul. 21, 2009 to Eubanks, discloses a sound system with a radio receiver having the ability to automatically tune to a new radio station if the current radio station is broadcasting a song, program, or other content that the user dislikes or if one or more predetermined radio stations is broadcasting content that the listener likes. U.S. Pat. No. 7,565,122 does not disclose any automatic control when the radio receiver is turned on or off.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,856,644, entitled “System and Method of Selective Advertising on a TV Channel” and issued Dec. 21, 2010 to Nicholson et al., discloses a method and system for providing selective advertising on a television channel by downloading appropriate advertisements from an advertising server to a subscriber's set top box over an out-of-band channel. The set top box monitors for download triggers to provide advertisements to the subscriber's set top box and advertising triggers to insert advertisements when an advertising opportunity occurs. The advertisements can be downloaded in advance of any advertising triggers to a local storage means associated with the set top box, if available.
The above-mentioned patents are hereby incorporated by reference herein.